City Department Ties Pasadena’s 36% Homeless Decrease to Local Initiatives

 

The City’s Housing and Career Services Department said in late March that projects it has executed or monitored in coordination with several nonprofits helped drastically reduce the number of homeless people in Pasadena over the past three years.

The number of homeless individuals has dropped from 1,216 in 2011 to 772 last year —  a 36 percent decrease — the Department said. In the same period, it noted, the homeless population across Los Angeles County grew by 16 percent.

Pasadena Housing Services director William Huang named three of the City’s projects and programs that helped permanently reduce a total of 336 people from the number of the city’s homeless: Project HOUSED, Centennial Place project and Rapid Re-Housing.

Project HOUSED, a program that helps the most vulnerable homeless persons in the city and provides them with extensive case management support, housed 55 persons from 2011 to 2013, ninety percent of which remained in their homes after a year. The project is managed by nonprofit Housing Works.

The city also coordinated with nonprofit Abode Communities and Union Station Homeless Services to house 130 persons to the Centennial Place, a 144-unit permanent supportive housing for homeless individuals.

Rapid Re-housing, meanwhile, is a program designed to quickly move the recent homeless into housing, recognizing that it is more difficult to house individuals the longer they remain homeless. Union Station Homeless Services and Door of Hope housed 151 persons from 2011 to 2013 through the program.

The department said additional 108 homeless people were housed by nonprofits, faith-based organizations and family support without City assistance.

Nonprofit Friends in Deed, through its city-funded Homeless Prevention program, also helped keep hundreds of people from being homeless during the two-year period, the Housing Department said.